San Francisco - California vintner Ernest Gallo, who with
his brother Julio built one of the world's largest wine empires and
is credited with developing Americans' taste for wine, has died at 97.
Gallo passed away Tuesday at his home in Modesto, his company, E
and J Gallo Winery said.
Ernest Gallo, the elder brother, was the business brains behind
the operation while Julio Gallo oversaw the making of the wine.
Ernest Gallo was renowned for his innovations in advertising,
marketing and branding. His advertising campaigns particularly are
seen as developing the mass market for wine that now exists in the
United States.
His innovations helped to build the country's largest winery.
Today, his company has 4,600 employees and sells its products in more
than 90 countries.
Ernest Gallo only gave up his chief-executive post to his son
Joseph at the age of 90 but remained active in the three-generation
company until his death.
'Ernest and Julio were builders: They built their company from
scratch, they helped build an industry and they helped build demand
for wine few could have ever imagined when they started out more than
70 years ago,' said Robert Koch, president of the Wine Institute
advocacy group.
The brothers founded their winery in the 1930s on the family farm
started by their Italian-immigrant parents without knowing a thing
about producing wine commercially, but they borrowed winemaking
pamphlets from the Modesto City Library and managed to make a profit
in their first year of production.
Their operation quickly grew with larger sales and the purchase of
more wineries as they developed products to appeal to the American
public. They sold a variety of wines as well as brandies, ports,
sherries, vermouth and wine coolers.
Their sales of such household-name brands as Thunderbird, Ripple
and Boone's Farm gave them a reputation for decades of producing
low-cost 'jug' wines, but in the 1990s, they made a push into the
fine-wine market.
Their company was the largest wine producer in the world until
2003, when a merger made Constellation Brands a bigger company.
Julio Gallo preceded his brother in death in 1993, dying in a jeep
accident.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
Your Talkback on this Story